From the First World War to a World of Peace, Khlebnikov’s Visions of Utopia

In his poetic conception Khlebnikov “linked time and space” (NP 318). He wished to find the laws which ruled the “state of time” as well as the “states of space” and he attempted to do this in his Tables of Fate (Doski Sudby, 1922). He was interested in all dimensions of time: past and present and above all future. War and conflicts of all times were at the center of his calculations aimed at discovering the “laws of time”. Khlebnikov’s attitude towards war was complex. In his early works an attraction towards the Slavic warrior or hunter reflected his militant pan-Slavic sympathies. In the same period he was a fighter for the cause of Russian budetlianstvo in opposition to Italian Futurism. In both Khlebnikov and Marinetti we can find the representation of war as a crucial phase in the movement of mankind towards a future seen as a completely new and Utopian age. In this paper we start from a parallel between their representations of war both from the ideological and the stylistic point of view. Furthermore, we briefly outline Khlebnikov’s own evolution towards his anti-militarist manifestos "The Martian's Trumpet" and "Proclamation of the Chairmen of the Terrestrial Globe" (spring 1917).